From Hillsboro to Lake Oswego
to Clackamas, metro Portland's high schools routinely pack 30 or more students
into a class, offer so few courses that some students have part-day schedules
and fall short of the state requirement that each course include 130 hours of
instruction.

The crammed classes,
restricted offerings and short school days or years, once unthinkable, have
become virtually standard across Portland's 11 largest districts, an analysis
by The Oregonian has found.

School leaders have not
willingly chosen these conditions. Rather, they result from budgets that restrict
how many teachers schools can hire and the limits of what one teacher can do.

Despite them, most students
are getting a good education and high schools remain vibrant learning
environments, principals and other education supervisors say.

And students report that
having a great teacher, the right mix of students in a class and interesting
material can be more important than whether a class contains 23 or 33 teens.

That's largely because so
many talented teachers are willing to go the extra mile for students, even when
they have potentially backbreaking student loads, said Bob Macauley, principal
of Glencoe High in Hillsboro, where typical class sizes range in the upper 30s
and many teachers shoulder more than 200 students.

"Teachers are really built to
continue to try to reach students, no matter what," said Christine Garcia,
principal of Clackamas High, where teachers shoulder the metro area's heaviest average
load and class sizes average in the mid-30s.

The notable exception to extra-large
high school classes and teaching loads is in Portland Public Schools, The
Oregonian's analysis found. In Oregon's largest school district, even the most sparsely
staffed high schools, Lincoln and Wilson, ask teachers to handle fewer students
apiece than any other high school in the 10 largest surrounding suburban
districts.

At Lake Oswego High, with
similar student demographics to Lincoln's, teachers shoulder 13 percent more
students than Lincoln teachers do. At Hillsboro High, with students similar to
those at Portland's Franklin High, teachers face 30 percent more students than Franklin's
do.

Districtwide, Portland's high
schools have 19.3 students enrolled for every full-time-equivalent teacher, a
load that is 20 percent lighter than the suburban districts' average.

"We are fortunate," acknowledged
Trip Goodall, Portland's director of high schools. "To be able to offer classes
that are appropriate in size, where teachers can really get to know their
students well – that's a difficult one not to be proud of."

Portland is able to put a lot
more teachers in its high schools than nearby districts for two reasons: A
voter-approved local property tax and other factors give Portland significantly
more money to spend per student. And, compared with the 10 biggest suburban
districts, it allots proportionally more of its teachers to high schools and
fewer to elementary schools and, especially, middle schools.

Oregon falls further behind the rest of the nation

Nationally, high schools are
staffed, on average, with a teacher for every 17 students -- a rate that is essentially
unchanged since 1990, according to the 2012 Digest of Education Statistics.
(Elementary school student-teacher ratios improved steadily during that
period.)

Oregon, by contrast, started the
1990s with high school student-teacher ratios that were somewhat higher than
the national average – then saw them surge from 20 students per teacher in 2006-07
to almost 23 students per teacher last school year, Oregon Department of
Education figures show.

Why? Recession-battered
school budgets couldn't keep up with inflation, let alone fast-rising employee
health and retirement costs. Across Oregon,
school boards reluctantly cut days from the school year and eliminated
thousands of teaching positions.

High school students and
teachers were hit hard. And in most schools, that hasn't let up, the
newspaper's analysis found.

At Glencoe High, one English
teacher had 242 students last semester – enough to require almost 24 hours of
grading if she were to spend 5 minutes on one essay by each.

At Tigard High, class sizes
average about 30, even when small classes for special education students or
those struggling with math or reading are included in the mix.

At Lakeridge High in Lake
Oswego, a community that prides itself on good schools and donates more than $1.5
million to them each year, multiple sections of honors chemistry and Spanish
have 33 students apiece. A U.S. government class has 36.

'A complex puzzle' to make high school schedules work for students

Still, principals say, with
enough planning plus consultation with their teachers, teaching loads can be spread
in a way that lets kids emerge well-rounded and well-educated.

They pack 50 students into PE
classes, 60 into band and chorus, 40 into art. They get freshmen off to a good
start by making their core academic classes some of the smallest in the school.
And they find teachers who teach certain electives or advanced classes without
heavy writing loads who will welcome 34, 36 and even 38 students so that
needier students and other teachers can catch a break.

Big classes may sound
horrible, but a small class with an ineffective teacher can be worse -- in terms of both results and what it feels
like to sit through 90 minutes of that class, educators and some students say.

Beaverton High sophomore
Christina Schoen said having 33 in her geometry section didn't keep the class
from learning or the teacher from promptly grading papers. "She is a really
good teacher," Schoen said. "She can handle the work."

Beaverton High freshman Ben Scherer
considered it a "slight problem" when he was placed in two big classes: about
35 in geometry and 44 in literature and
composition.

The literature classroom was
jam-packed and there was never enough time for everyone to chime in. But, he
said, "I was fine with it. It's an interesting class."

Then, after first semester,
Beaverton schools were able to add teachers thanks to an infusion of money meant
to compensate for property tax breaks granted to local employers. Beaverton
High Principal Anne Erwin added another freshman English teacher, and suddenly
Scherer had just 25 other students in his composition class.

Now every student in the
class is expected to contribute to discussions, he said. "You get to ask the
teacher more questions and voice more opinions, instead of having 44 people
raise their hands."

Principals, if given more teachers, won't reduce class size across the board

Most principals said they
don't plan to reduce class sizes across the board. Classes of 30 or 31 aren't a
serious detriment in many cases, they say, and some teachers can effectively
handle more than 180 students a term.

It's more important to reduce
class sizes for freshmen and those who struggle with math, reading or writing, said
Macauley, the Glencoe High principal. High schools also benefit when elementary
and middle schools are well staffed, he said.

"The one statistic that
nobody can argue with is that it's important to get kids reading by third
grade," he said. "Then, freshmen who haven't passed six credits at the end of
their first year, they are at risk immediately" of failing to earn a diploma.
"So our eyes are focused on reducing class sizes at freshman year."

It's also important to add
more sections and introduce compelling classes, such as career-tech classes and
cutting-edge science and engineering options, that will lure students to take
full schedules and launch them to post-high school success, said Carol
Campbell, principal of Portland's Grant High.

Portland parent Lisa Zuniga
agrees it should be a high priority to end part-day schedules and unwanted
study halls, and put students into a full schedule of classes that tee them up
for college and make them well-rounded.

When a high school's
offerings "aren't compelling or robust or don't even exist for every student," Zuniga
said, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that many students will opt for
schedules with gaping holes.

Portland, with its relatively
flush budgets, should lead the way, she said.

"Does it matter that Portland
has more teachers than Hillsboro or that Hillsboro has a little bit better
graduation rate? Neither is good enough. We should be benchmarking against
where we think our kids should be, because they are going to be working in
other states or competing in a global economy," she said.

"If our kids in other states
are getting weeks more of instruction, is that the right thing for our kids?"